Make a Mask

You don’ t have to spend a fortune to make a mask to join the Venice Carnival! Discover the fundamental secrets to make yourself a mask, you need only few commonly used objects and lot of fantasy!

There are various techniques (more or less complex and expensive) to make a mask, everything depends on the final results you want to obtain.
In these few lines we suggest the use of paper pulp, not expensive at all and, with a bit of patience, it is possible to obtain amazing results.
A cooking pot will be the base for our mask.

Dilute the glue in a bowl: 2 parts of glue and 1 of water, mix well. Put some paper strips (30 cm long and 3 cm large) into the bowl and lay the wet strips on the plate previously covered with Vaseline (carefully avoid to let the first lay of paper to stick to the plate) The stripes will have to be superimposed for about 0,5 cm and have to come out from the edge of the plate. Apply 4 or 5 layers of paper paying attention to dispose the upper layer on a right angle, press well and let it dry for 24 hours.

Once it dries, turn the plate upside down and draw the edges with a pencil. Remove the paper and cut along the line previously drawn. Draw and cut eyes, nose and mouth.
Take a strip of paper (cm 1x30) soaked with glue: paste an extremity in a point at your choice at the edge of the dish, folding it on its inferior side beyond the edge and tear it off. Let dry, sand with paper and apply 2 layers of painted water then decorate it with small objects.

This is the simplest way to make a mask that covers only the face. Of course some details can be added, such as nose, hair, fat cheeks or anything that comes to your mind! Those details have to be added only once the mask is dry.

It is possible to create weird and complex shapes using a wire to create a structure to apply the paper on. We suggest you to use 2mm wire for the structure and 1mm for the rest.

Draw a circle large enough to let your head pass through, put it on your shoulders and shape it: this will be the base for our mask!!!

Shape the profile that you want to create, a person or an animal or…. why not something in the middle !?!?!. Be careful to make it large enough to wear it. If you like, add some particulars such as nose, eyebrows, beak... For the details use wire or paperboard.

Now create the volume of the mask by glueing some rings you have created with the wire. The more dense, the more it will be easy to cover the structure with paper. As usual, use the soaked stripes and lay them over.